The OPLC’s XO (http://laptop.org/laptop/) Software has just been upgraded to Release 8.2.0 (see Release notes/8.2.0 - OLPC). I need to get mine upgraded

My friend lilja sent me this link: Icelanders are NOT terrorists about the Icelandic financial collapse. I’d heard about it for a couple of weeks and that inflation could go over 30% and that all the banks there had collapsed. Iceland, in Financial Collapse, Is Likely to Need I.M.F. Help - NYTimes.com suggests that iceland may have to give up its currency and perhaps even join the EU.

Years ago, one of my students did a study of Newfoundland and Icelandic cod fisheries during the collapse, and I learned a lot from her about the age old fights between Iceland and England, so I wasn’t shocked that England seems to have taken such a drastic step. I can’t find any non-biased description of what’s gone on and why. Iceland bank collapse: The history of the Cod War - financial crisis - Telegraph has a good description of what went on in the past. Strangely enough, England, like Canada, destroyed their fishing industries locally, which was why Iceland protected their own. And Iceland still, last time I checked, had a profitable cod industry, unlike Canada or England.

What cracks me up about this whole economic crisis is that it shows that our capitalist economy is based on ignorance, fear and greed wrapped up in competition, economic theory and politics of growth. So, business people only care about ‘confidence in the market’, i.e. feeling. Why shouldn’t we use other feelings to run an economy? The system’s always been moribund. I remember thinking that back in the ’70s when I argued with my dad over the idiocy of using government money to prop up capitalist systems, saying it was a combination of socialism and theft. I’m an anti-institutionalist anyway, so capitalism and socialism are identical systems of abuse of people for the people who run the system, and who wrap us up in games over which we have no control.

Sure, people can say that we can’t change because we’re so wedded to the system. Fine. Have it your way and get taken to the cleaners over and over while actively supporting the system that’s fleecing you. Isn’t that battered voters syndrome?

Iceland’s situation is dire and tragic. England’s response seems to be mean-spirited panic. Both are the result of the failure of governments to protect people before a crisis, to have leadership, and to ensure that there are reserves for crises. What happens between them seems like what is happening within the US. So, is this what governments are about? They let mean-spirited and tragic things happen because they lacked the leadership to reign in global greed? To be honest, globalism is a process by which individuals and states give up control of their autonomy in the name of greed to the hands of those governed by whim and panic.

check out Yes, In My Backyard Blog! I want to go, but i have a cold!

The SBU: a self-balancing electric unicycle - Boing Boing Gadgets points to the For the unstable: A self-balancing unicycle | Crave, the gadget blog article and video for this cool tool. I would like one!

Slashdot | Wikipedia’s New Definition of Truth

Simson Garfinkel has an interesting essay on MIT Technology Review in which he examines the way that Wikipedia has redefined the commonly accepted use of the word ‘truth.’ While many academic experts have argued that Wikipedia’s articles can’t be trusted because they are written and edited by volunteers who have never been vetted, studies have found that the articles are remarkably accurate. ‘But wikitruth isn’t based on principles such as consistency or observability. It’s not even based on common sense or firsthand experience,’ says Garfinkel. What makes a fact or statement fit for inclusion is verifiability — that it appeared in some other publication, but there is a problem with appealing to the authority of other people’s written words: many publications don’t do any fact checking at all, and many of those that do simply call up the subject of the article and ask if the writer got the facts wrong or right. Wikipedia’s policy of ‘No Original Research’ also leads to situations like Jaron Lanier’s frustrated attempts to correct his own Wikipedia entry based on firsthand knowledge of his own career. So what is Wikipedia’s truth? ‘Since Wikipedia is the most widely read online reference on the planet, it’s the standard of truth that most people are implicitly using when they type a search term into Google or Yahoo. On Wikipedia, truth is received truth: the consensus view of a subject.’

Personally, I don’t see what the point of this is. Truth has always been socially constructed. It is only that the social structures pretended that the truth was immutable and external to social norms. I like the fact that truth is now a transparent negotiated location of contestation rather than a pronouncement by an opaque social institution. YAY wikipedia.

Yuka and the Shadow II, originally uploaded by complicitytheory.

the royal palace in copenhagen… at sunset.

My friend Andrew sent me this article FT.com / In depth - Letter: Andrew Lahde, Lahde Capital Management. Andrew’s a manhattan business consultant. Not that that matters much, but have a look at that article and this talking about who and what this person was and did.
FT.com / Companies / Financial services - Hedge fund manager slams ‘idiot’ bankers

Some of these quotes from the article are interesting in terms of education, reminding us that we’ve not only dumbed down education, but dumbed it up, and it is possible for people to get ahead in life, particularly in politics, without having much in the way of a meaningful liberal arts education. That people will vote as they do, and actively eschew intelligence in the society is telling. Reminds me of the story The Marching Morons by one of my favourite writers, C.M. Kornbluth. And that someone told me that Temple Grandin said that while everyone was out dancing, an Aspie (someone with Aspergers Syndrome) was inventing the wheel.

I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.

Give up on leaving your mark. Throw the Blackberry away and enjoy life.

Our policies have other countries literally laughing at our stupidity, most notably Canada, as well as several European nations (both Eastern and Western). You would not know this by paying attention to U.S. media sources though, as they tend not to elaborate on who is laughing at the United States this week.

Uploaded the #IR9 photos from the Second Life workshop yesterday. Have a gander. It was loads of fun, and there were plasticine peeps!

Slashdot | Internet Co-inventor Vint Cerf Endorses Obama is that not enough?

50 of your favourite words from the bbc has 2 of my faves.

24. Sepulchral - of or pertaining to the tomb. I just love the way it sounds and the movements my mouth must make to say it. To be sure, I rarely have the opportunity to use it, except during Halloween.

29. Chthonic: first encountered in Philip Pullman, then in the BBC series Rome, meaning dead, underground, of the nether world.

Good for halloweeen!